30 December 2015

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a government office in a northwestern Pakistani city on Tuesday, killing at least 26 people and wounding 45 in an attack claimed by a breakaway Taliban group.

The bombing took place in the city of Mardan, outside the regional office of the National Database and Registration Authority, or NADRA, which issues identity cards, according to senior police officer Saeed Khan Wazir.

29 December 2015

An apology from Japan's prime minister and a pledge of more than $8
million sealed a breakthrough deal Monday in a decades-long impasse with
South Korea over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run
brothels during World War II.

The accord, which aims to resolve the emotional core of South Korea's grievances with its former colonial overlord, could begin to reverse decades of animosity and mistrust between the two thriving democracies, trade partners and staunch U.S. allies. It represents a shift for Tokyo's conservative government and a new willingness to compromise by previously wary Seoul.

28 December 2015

Like consumers around the globe, Indians are flocking to the online
marketplace in droves these days. But there's one unusual item flying
off the virtual shelves: Online retailers say cow dung patties are
selling like hot cakes.

The patties — cow poop mixed with hay and dried in the sun, made mainly by women in rural areas and used to fuel fires — have long been available in India's villages. But online retailers including Amazon and eBay are now reaching out to the country's ever-increasing urban population, feeding into the desire of older city folks to harken back to their childhood in the village.

27 December 2015

Widespread floods have forced nearly 140,000 people from their homes in
Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil following days of torrential
rains that drenched a region where the countries border each other.

Paraguay is the hardest hit with at least 100,000 evacuating according to the National Emergency Department.

26 December 2015

India's Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan
on Friday, his first such trip as prime minister to this Islamic nation
that has been India's long-standing archrival in the region.

The previously unannounced visit is a potential sign of thawing relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The two heads of government also had an unscheduled meeting at the Paris climate change talks earlier this month.

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, India and Pakistanhave fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, the Himalayan region that both countries claim.

25 December 2015

Pope Francis issued a Christmas Day prayer that recent U.N.-backed peace processes for Syria
and Libya will quickly end the suffering of their people, denouncing
the "monstrous evil" and atrocities they have endured and praising
countries that have taken in refugees.

Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Francis issued a plenary indulgence for all Catholics in hopes of spreading the church's message of mercy in a world torn by war, poverty and extremist attacks. The sun-soaked St. Peter's Square was under heavy security, as it has been since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks by Islamic extremists that left 130 dead.

22 December 2015

The Miss Universe pageant and host Steve Harvey doubled down on the
apologies Monday after an excruciating live television moment —
announcing incorrectly that Miss Colombia had won and then taking the
crown from her head to give to a rival from the Philippines.

The fallout from Sunday's show made Harvey an online symbol of "oops" moments, drew a reaction from Colombia's president and even a gloating tweet fromDonald Trump, the pageant's former owner.

20 December 2015

A
man convicted as a juvenile in the fatal 2012 gang rape of a young woman
aboard a moving bus in India's capital ended his three-year term in a
reform home Sunday, as angry protesters demanded that he remain in
detention.

The man was short of his 18th birthday when he and five others brutally attacked the 23-year-old woman in a case that shocked India, where sexual violence against women is rampant.

Spain's
Mireia Lalaguna Royo was named the winner of the Miss World 2015
competition Saturday night in the southern Chinese island resort of
Sanya, an event dogged by controversy over China's refusal to allow
Canada's entrant to attend.

Sofia Nikitchuk of Russia was the runner-up and Indonesia's Maria Harfanti took third place in the final following a lengthy competition featuring 114 women.

18 December 2015

Mother
Teresa, the tiny, stooped nun who cared for the poorest of the poor in
the slums of India and beyond, will be declared a saint next year after Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her intercession.

The Vatican on Friday set no date for the canonization, but it is widely believed that it will take place in the first week of September to coincide with the 19th anniversary of Mother Teresa's death and during Francis' Holy Year of Mercy.

The Catholic Church makes saints to provide role models for the faithful, and Pope Francis
has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors in churning them out
at a rapid clip. The process is cloaked in secrecy and open to
criticism, given that it deals with science-defying miracles,
politicized choices and significant sums of money, as was recently
revealed in some blockbuster books on Vatican finance.

But saints
aren't going away anytime soon, and Francis has actually made the
process easier in some ways by doing away with the miracle requirement
for several high-profile saints.

On Thursday, Pope Francis
approved a decree from the Congregation of Causes of Saints that
attributed a miracle to Mother Teresa, the woman who spent her life
ministering to the poor in India. With that approval, Mother Teresa , born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, will be declared a saint.

According to The Associated Press, no date has been set for the canonization, but Italian media have speculated that the ceremony may take place in the first week of September. Mother Teresa died on Sept. 5, 1997.

17 December 2015

The
Federal Reserve's rate hike was welcomed in Asia as a sign of strength
in the U.S., one of the region's biggest export markets. But it could
complicate Chinese efforts to avoid a sharper economic slowdown and keep
the yuan steady.

The U.S. central bank on Wednesday raised the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter percentage point, the first such increase in nearly a decade. The decision ended a long period of uncertainty about when the Fed would begin winding down the easy money deployed to help heal the economic damage of the 2008 financial crisis.

16 December 2015

India's top court issued several orders Wednesday to fight record
pollution in New Delhi, including a temporary ban on the sale of large
diesel vehicles and a stiff hike on the toll for trucks entering the
capital.

The Supreme Court also banned trucks from entering the city if they're over 10 years old or are just transiting through. In addition, all taxis in the area, including private ride-hailing services such as Uber, have to switch to compressed natural gas by March 31.

15 December 2015

The face of arguably the most famous person in history was a mystery until forensic anthropology put together Jesus’ probable face.

Without a physical description in the Bible or any other known writings, remains from which to find DNA, the presence of a skeleton or skull, or original drawings, the image of Jesus through history was left to the artist’s imagination. As a general rule their imagination did not stray too far, typically depicting Jesus with features reflecting their own cultural standard for a good looking man.

The British Union Jack once symbolized the reach of a powerful empire —
but it may need to yield soon to a delicate silver fern. At least on New
Zealand's flag.

New Zealand on Tuesday revealed the new flag design chosen by the public to be put up as a challenger to the current flag in a March vote.

The question of whether to change a national symbol that has endured for more than a century and harks back to a colonial past has raised plenty of passion, and skepticism, in this nation of 4.6 million.

14 December 2015

Pardeep
Kaleka spent several days after 9/11 at his father's South Milwaukee
gas station, fearing that his family would be targeted by people who
assumed they were Muslim. No, Kaleka explained on behalf of his father,
who wore a turban and beard and spoke only in broken English, the family
was Sikh, a southeast Asian religion based on equality and unrelated to
Islam.

But amid a new wave of anti-Islamic sentiment since the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Kaleka is vowing to take an entirely different approach.

Saudi
voters elected 20 women for local government seats, according to
results released to The Associated Press on Sunday, a day after women
voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country's history.

The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia's largest city to a small village near Islam's holiest site.

13 December 2015

Nearly 200 nations adopted the first global pact to fight climate change
on Saturday, calling on the world to collectively cut and then
eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on
countries that don't.

The "Paris agreement" aims to keep global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects ofclimate change.

Women across Saudi Arabia marked a historic milestone on Saturday, both
voting and running as candidates in government elections for the first
time, but just outside polling stations they waited for male drivers — a
reminder of the limitations still firmly in place.

The landmark election for local council seats was not expected to immediately advance the status of women in Saudi Arabia, who are still not permitted to drive, but it seen as a chance for them to make their voices heard as citizens.

"We are making history. I just made history," said candidate Karima Bokhary, 50, after casting her ballot at a polling station in the capital Riyadh.

11 December 2015

Scuffles involving several dozen lawmakers have erupted at Ukraine's
parliament after one deputy tried to drag the prime minister away from
the rostrum.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk was giving his report at the Supreme Rada on Friday when a deputy from the president's party went up to the rostrum with a bunch of red roses. After he handed the roses to Yatsenyuk, Oleh Barna took him by the waist and put his hands around his leg, trying to drag him away as Yatsenyuk clutched onto the rostrum.

10 December 2015

An appeal court acquitted Bollywood star Salman Khan on Thursday in a
drunken-driving, hit-and-run case from more than a decade ago.

The Bombay High Court threw out an earlier conviction and five-year sentence given the 49-year-old actor.

"The
trial court's verdict is quashed and set aside," Justice A.R. Joshi
said in reading the verdict to a crowded courtroom, according to the
Press Trust of India news agency. "Salman is acquitted of all charges."

Internet pioneer Yahoo, under pressure from unhappy shareholders and
desperate to avoid a huge investment-related tax bill, will break itself
apart — just not in the way it had previously planned.

The company will now aim to spin off its struggling Internet business — essentially, everything associated with the Yahoo brand name — into a new company. Yahoo itself would then become little more than a holding company for its $32 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

6 December 2015

Indian
authorities were investigating possible negligence after 18 hospital
patients died when rainwaters from massive floods in southern Tamil Nadu
state knocked out generators and switched off ventilators.

The patients were in the intensive care unit at MIOT International hospital in the state capital of Chennai when floodwaters seeped into the room with the generators, cutting off power to the building and the ventilators earlier this week, stateHealthSecretary J. Radhakrishnan said Saturday.

5 December 2015

Spiderman was there. As was Batman. The supervillain Joker rubbed shoulders with Wicked Lulu from the League of Legends.

Thousands of fans cheered and clicked pictures with their favorite comic characters Saturday at India's annual comic book fest at a sprawling fairground in southeast New Delhi.

The fifth Delhi Comic Con had something for everyone who attended on this mild, wintry day. Die-hard fans came dressed as their favorite comic characters. Others crowded the more than 200 stalls selling comic books, graphic novels and merchandise on cartoon characters.

Shiva Parwar has been camping on the pavement for five days, waiting in
line for cooking gas. There are 521 gas cylinders ahead of his, and not
even the dealer knows when more fuel will arrive, thanks to a
two-month-long border blockade that shows no sign of ending.

"I sent my wife and child back to our village home because we don't have the gas to cook," said Parwar, whose roadside candy stall is shuttered while he waits. "I have been eating in restaurants with borrowed money but that too has run out. I have no option but to wait in line."

Severe floods that hit the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu this week
have killed 18 patients after rain waters knocked out generators,
officials said Saturday.

State officials were investigating complaints of negligence by hospital authorities in the state capital Chennai, which is reeling from unprecedented floods.

The 18 patients were in the intensive care unit when a power outage affected ventilators in the hospital, leading to their deaths over the past two to three days, said Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan.

3 December 2015

The heaviest rainfall in more than 100 years has devastated swathes of
the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, forcing thousands to leave
their submerged homes as schools, offices and an airport remained shut
for a second day Thursday.

Chennai, the state capital, received more than 330 millimeters (13 inches) of rain over 24 hours, significantly higher than the average for the entire month of December, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said.

The heaviest rainfall in more than 100 years has devastated swathes of
the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with thousands forced to leave
their submerged homes and schools, offices and a regional airport shut
for a second day Thursday.

At least 269 people had been killed in the state since heavy rains started in the beginning of November, said India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh, although no deaths have been reported in the latest deluge.

Yahoo's board is considering an activist shareholder's demand to sell
the Internet services the company is best known for, a maneuver that
might help the company dodge a tax bill of more than $10 billion looming
over its holdings in China's Alibaba Group.

The boardroom intrigue revolves around a recent proposal from Starboard Value, a New York hedge fund that been pressuring Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to take dramatic steps to boost the company's stock.

2 December 2015

The coast of southern Chile has become a grave for 337 sei whales that
were found beached in what scientists say is one of the biggest whale
strandings ever recorded.

Biologist Vreni Haussermann told The Associated Press Tuesday that she made the discovery along with other scientists in June during an observation flight over fjords in Chile's southern Patagonia region. The team has been collecting samples since then.

1 December 2015

A
rudder control system problem that had occurred nearly two dozen times
in the previous 12 months coupled with the pilots' response led to last
year's crash of an AirAsia plane in Indonesia that killed all 162 people
on board, investigators said Tuesday.

In releasing their report, the country's National Transportation Safety Committee said an analysis of Flight 8501's data recorder showed the rudder control system had sent repeated warnings to the pilots during the Dec. 28 flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.